IN EARLY February 2022, at a gala gathering of Prince Charles’s favourite charity, the British Asian Trust, held at the British Museum, a number of celebrities posed for a memorable photograph with the heir to the throne and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.
They included Adar Poonawalla and his wife, Natasha, alongside the chancellor Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata, and the home secretary Priti Patel.
Poonawalla tweeted that it had “always been a pleasure and privilege to support the incredible work being done” by the charity “to aid disadvantaged communities across south Asia” being done by Charles, and that he and Natasha were “in admiration of your leadership”.
But who exactly is 41-year-old Adar Poonawalla, a new entrant in this year’s Power List? Those who monitor fashion trends have observed that he is always snappily dressed. He and Natasha – the glamorous power couple were married in 2006 and have two children, Cyrus and Darius – have become a fixture in glossy magazines.
Actually, all that is a bit deceptive. When it comes to saving lives, Poonawalla is a serious player as CEO of the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer.
This has produced 1.5 billion doses of the Covid vaccine since the start of the pandemic, of which 150-200 million have gone to some 70 countries. More would have been sent abroad had there not been a ban on exports during the devastating second wave in India.
The Serum Institute also makes vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hib, BCG, r-hepatitis B, measles, mumps and rubella. Since 2020, it has been collaborating with Oxford University on a malaria vaccine that is currently undergoing stage III trials in Africa.
Adar Poonawalla is the son of Cyrus Poonawalla, 80, who set up the Serum Institute in 1966 “with a strong commitment to global health”, and remains its chairman. Adar is the grandson of the late Soli Poonawalla, who began the family’s involvement in horse racing and established the Poonawalla Stud Farm in 1946. It is said that the family’s surname derives from Poona (now Pune), where Adar’s grandfather owned land and where the Serum Institute’s manufacturing plant is based.
The Poonawallas are Parsis, now a tiny community in India no more than 60,000 in number practising the Zoroastrian faith. When they sought refuge in India in the 8th century, after fleeing persecution under rising Islam in Persia, the new immigrants promised to blend in harmoniously – like “sugar in milk”.
From JRD Tata to Ratan Tata and the conductor Zubin Mehta (and in Britain, Karan Bilimoria), the Parsis have made major contributions to the betterment of society. The late singer, Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara), was one, too.
Adar Poonawalla, who was born in India on January 14, 1981, has close work and family connections with the UK. He went to Bishop Cotton School in Pune before attending St Edmund’s School, Canterbury, an independent establishment founded in 1749, followed by the University of Westminster.
At the Serum Institute, it has been company policy to keep prices as low as possible so that the Covid vaccine, for example – this is manufactured in Pune under licence from the British-Swedish firm AstraZaneca – is not denied to the poorest in Africa, South America, Asia and elsewhere.
Vaccines going abroad are routed through an organisation called GAVI, a global vaccine alliance, where Poonawalla is a board member.
Poonawalla is now in the process of strengthening his links with the UK through Serum Life Sciences, a subsidiary of the Serum Institute of India. It has committed itself to investing £240m in the UK to support clinical trials, research and possibly the manufacture of vaccines. In February 2021, the firm’s headquarters in Pune received a visit from Liz Truss, then international trade secretary – as it did with Charles and Camilla in 2013.
Poonawalla is investing £50 in Oxford Biomedica, a “leading, fully integrated, gene and cell therapy group focused on developing life changing treatments for serious diseases”.
This is expected to create 120 new, highly skilled jobs. He said he was “delighted to have a strategic partnership with Oxford Biomedica, with the objective of building long term capacity in the UK”.
The Poonawallas have had a long relationship with Oxford University, which awarded an honorary degree to Cyrus Poonawalla in 2019 “in recognition of his extraordinary work manufacturing inexpensive vaccines for the developing world”.
When the pandemic began and a team at Oxford started researching a new vaccine, the university struck a partnership with AstraZaneca, which did not see the project as a profit boosting exercise. It was also agreed that the Serum Institute would manufacture the vaccine in bulk in India.
“We came together in a matter of a week, put agreements in place, started doing a technology transfer and moving on,” recalled Poonawalla. “We already had a relationship with Oxford and the great scientists there because we’re working with them on a malaria vaccine.”
He added: “Our company has always focused on supplying vaccines to developing countries because they generally don’t get access to larger western pharmaceutical companies, whose product pricing is more expensive.”
The AstraZaneca vaccine made in India by the Serum Institute is marketed as “Covishield”, but this is identical to the version manufactured in Europe by AstraZaneca.
Incidentally, in 2012, Poonawalla, who had taken over as the Serum Institute’s CEO in 2011 and immediately set about expanding its capacity, acquired a Netherlands-based firm, Bilthoven Biologicals, which also manufactures the Covid vaccine. He has given £50m to Oxford University, which will use the gift to put up a new “Poonawalla Vaccines Research Building” to house 300 research scientists.
His wife, Natasha, who is chair of Serum Life Sciences, stressed that “the development of vaccines has been the lifelong focus of the Poonawalla family….we are making this key donation to give the world-class team at Oxford a brand-new facility from which to take their research to the next level.”